It is a pleasure for me to be here this afternoon.

And it has, up to date, and I think it will continue, at least for 3 1/2 years more.

I, Harry S. Truman, President of the United States of America, do hereby invite the people of the United States to observe the week beginning Sunday, June 5, 1949, as Patrick Henry Week

Bare relief along, however, would not make it possible for the Republic to become self-supporting.

The needs of the Republic of Korea for economic assistance have been carefully studied in the light of the latest available information.

Aid in the restoration of the Korean economy should be less costly to the United States in the end than a continued program of relief.

The present division of Korea along the 380 parallel was never intended by the United States.

I am convinced that the sum of $150,000,000 is the minimum aid essential during the coming year for progress toward economic recovery.

All Americans who have come to know the Korean people appreciate their fierce passion for freedom and their keen desire to become an independent nation.

The United States through direct negotiations with the Soviet Union sought to restore the unity of Korea.

The continuation of that assistance is of great importance to the successful achievement of the foreign policy aims of the United States.

The survival and progress of the Republic toward a self-supporting, stable economy will have an immense and far-reaching influence on the people of Asia.

It was resolved that Korea should be liberated.

The United States terminated its military government in Korea upon the inauguration of the Government of the Republic of Korea and recognized the new government on New Year's Day, 1949.

The people of the United States have long had sympathetic feelings for the Korean people.

The Soviet Union refused to permit the United Nations Commission to enter its zone.

The most effective, practical aid which the United States can give toward reaching them will be to assist the Republic to move toward self support at a decent standard of living.

Korea has become a testing ground in which the validity and practical value of the ideals and principles of democracy which the Republic is putting into practice are being matched against the practices of communism which have been imposed…